![]() ![]() Personally, I'd avoid any family with a child <5, but that's just me. (All pay includes free room and food.) For me, this type of family is normally preferable. Normally this pays very little due to very little work, and you will probably have little to nothing to do while kid's at school, so you can have a second job (if you're legally eligible to in whatever country), or take language classes, or whatever. Most common is the "we have an extra bedroom and we want our kid to learn English so why not?" model, where your duties involve picking up a kid from school while parents are still at work, amusing kid in English, helping kid with their homework, walking a dog, maybe sometimes walking down the street to buy groceries, whatever. This often involves only a couple of hours of work a day. This may include "we just need someone to pick the kids up from school," or more commonly "we want an English-speaking role model for our child(ren)," or less commonly, "single-parent family trying to make it work." This could be any number of kids anywhere, but often it's an only child. This type of family is normally only worth working for if you want a glamorous house/city and if you come up with extremely clear written ground rules in advance about what you will and won't do. Talking to them about this, they said it was no problem and that they would teach me French cooking, but it felt like a servant role more than an au pair role, so I backed off. In this case, after speaking with their last au pair (also male), I found that they required two 3-course meals for 8 people, twice a day, cooked in the French style, as well as laundry service for the house, and that they gave 0.5 days/week off. ![]() The thing to watch out for here is that you are very likely to become a domestic servant. These families tend to be wealthy, both parents work (or the mother is a socialite and therefore out of the house most days), live in a major European city, and often have 3+ children. Jobs will include light housekeeping, helping the children with their homework, speaking English with them, and some cooking." This is a real family that offered me a job. We have a summer home in Belgium, where you will spend summer with us. We live in a large manor home with gardens and a maid in Paris. I am a lawyer and my husband is vice-president human resources for a bank. The first type is the "we have more kids than we can deal with" family. There's fundamentally two types of au pair families, and your job is to deduce first which type you want, and second which type each family you talk to is. 98% of families on AuPairWorld request female-only, but I put up a profile as a guy, and almost all the people who contacted me for Skype interviews had marked that they wanted a woman only, so don't be discouraged…most assume they want a woman but if you seem like a great guy, they'll totally hire you. (Helps if you're in your early to mid 20s, clean-shaven, no tattoos, etc.) Make sure your profile mentions any experience you have with kids, even if it's young family members you enjoy spending a significant amount of time with. If you seem like a wholesome, friendly guy who likes kids and could be trusted with someone's children, you should have no problem. This goes a huge way to fighting any concerns people have about male au pairs. Protip: post a couple of photos of you doing something wholesome (a photo with your family from Thanksgiving, especially if there are small kids present, for example) and make your profile photo you working/playing with kids (like if you were a camp counsellor or have young cousins or something). Okay, you should have no problem finding work on AuPairWorld - I got like six job offers from that site and I'm a white guy, early 20s, Canadian/British. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Details
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |